Aspects of the present invention relate generally to the field of information systems and computer software and more specifically to providing meta data information for objects in real time.
An object is a software model representing a real-world component. For example, an object may represent a document such as a file, a report, an invoice, a book, photographs or a spreadsheet. An object may also represent other more complex components, for example a product, a person, a business partner, a customer, or a piece of equipment. Objects may be stored in a repository, limited only by the storage capacity of the repository. If a significant number of objects are stored in a single repository, it may be difficult for users to discover the most useful object in the repository.
In some repositories, meta-data may be provided to facilitate organization of objects in the repository. The metadata may include the name of the object, the date the object was modified or created, the type of the object (i.e. a Microsoft Office document, Crystal Reports document file or a text file), the size of the object, the location of the object, and the author(s) of the object. However, in some repositories, when such metadata is available, a user searching for the most useful object in a repository will have to select each individual object, one at a time, to view the metadata for each object. If metadata is not available, or the metadata fails to provide sufficient information to identify the desired object, the user will have to open each individual object and analyze the contents of each object to identify the most useful object.
However, selecting more than one object at a time will not result in more efficient results. In most repositories, the metadata for multiple selected objects may not be shown or may not be valuable. When multiple objects are selected within a repository, the metadata for a particular value will not be shown if the metadata value for each individual object is unique. For example, if multiple objects are selected, the author metadata for the selected objects will not be shown or may be shown only if the author is identical for all of the selected objects. The metadata for the selected objects may show an aggregation of the metadata values for each of the objects in the group, for example, the total size for all the selected objects or the total number of objects selected. Thus a system that more efficiently displays metadata to facilitate the discovery of the most useful object stored in a repository may be desired.